I cannot believe I passed up that Attaché job in Ukraine ... but it was best for my marriage, in a variety of ways.
Sigh ... the Soviets/Russians were good enemies in a variety of ways. You'll never see an Al Qaeda spokesman look like that.
Oh, and snerk; who is that fella over her right shoulder?
In case you were wondering what started this; here is the video. I'm not sure what lions have to do with it ....
Sigh ... the Soviets/Russians were good enemies in a variety of ways. You'll never see an Al Qaeda spokesman look like that.
Oh, and snerk; who is that fella over her right shoulder?
In case you were wondering what started this; here is the video. I'm not sure what lions have to do with it ....
They could have let the poor lass rehearse that a few times, and not made her do it in one take. She fills out a sweater almost as nice as Actus Rhesus.
ReplyDeleteShe reminds me of <span>Leeloo Minai Lekarariba-Laminai-Tchai Ekbat De Sebat</span>
ReplyDeleteNicely done video on the system concept, if a bit long. Pretty clear that their CONOPS is to attack ships in international waters without provocation and from behind the camouflage of a merchant.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the Guest comment, that was me....
ReplyDeleteNot just ships -- the SS-N-27 has a significant land attack capability in it's LACM version as well. More of a threat, IMNSHO, than the so-called SCUD-in-a-tub...
ReplyDeletew/r, SJS
Let the record show that I did NOT make any untoward comment regarding the capacity of Actus Rhesus to fill out a sweater.....
ReplyDeleteWhat URR said.
ReplyDeleteMoving on a bit, the young women of the nation-states which formerly made up the Soviet Union are, more often then not, stunningly attractive. High in the Stupifying Jones Range of the Max Fine Hammer Scale.
Interesting system. Could the CIA set up a shell company to buy them for the US Navy, and do the LCS's (fraternal twins...Little Crappy Ship and Lousy Combat System) have weight, GM, righting arm and space to take them aboard, if the aluminum can handle the load?
Hold out for a volume discount.
LCS delende est.
Arms sales must be setting a blistering pace; that is, until Wal-Mart gets into Russia and begins selling the discounted, unadvertised Chinese equivalent.
ReplyDeleteSun Tzu said: All warfare is based on deception. We have willingly turned ourselves into the redcoats we fought so hard to be free from a couple of hundred years ago. Our way of war has gone from hit and run, sniper, guerilla, deception - which worked great - to stand up mass up, let them know we're coming - which doesn't appear to work at all.
ReplyDeleteWe shouldn't be upset that others realize the fundamental concept that war is war, not sport, and deception is a critical component of it. We should be upset that we act as if deception doesn't matter.
What a sales job! Nice of all those opposing forces to sit there defenseless and clueless while all those missiles come at them-no Patriots, no AEGIS, no CIWS, counterbattery radar, etc, not to mention ECM, UAV surveillance, or aerial interdiction.
ReplyDeleteI am merely standing up for the superior American product. I am a Patriotic Badger. ;)
ReplyDeleteWhom?
ReplyDeleteKind of like the old German Raiders. What's new is old and what's old is new. And as for Svetlana's script mentioning that Russia has a proven system for not letting weapons fall into terrorist hands...what about state terror sponsors Iran, Syria, and North Korea? Oh, that's right, they're just misunderstood.
ReplyDeleteCompletely O/T, but Byron might appreciate this tale of shipfitting done poorly:
ReplyDelete<span>
</span>
Leeloo Dallas Multipass! You know she was born in Kiev, right?
ReplyDeleteScott: below is for you. And jeez, dude, what badger-hole could be deep enough for you to not have seen the greatest sci-fi movie of the 90's: The Fifth Element!
You may need the Badger Protection Program before AR gets done with you!!
ReplyDelete8-9 years ago, when I finally gave up on planning and thinking and committed to actually travelling, my brother decided to meet me in Prague and then travel to Krakow and Warsaw with me (I had already been travelling for about 8 months at that point).
The entire time leading up to his part of the trip he would email jokes about old stereotypes of Czech and Polish women, and would question "why the hell" I was that far east rather than in, say, France.
Then he got there.
Took him five minutes to figure out I knew what I was doing, and that the old stereotypes were actually successful Russian propaganda to try and keep us away from their women!
My favorite part of the sales video was all the US-built equipment being used by the evil "aggressor nation" as opposed to the former Soviet-Bloc hardware generally found in such countries. ;)
ReplyDeleteClub K... Kiwanis? (Salamanders made me think of that when he mentioned "Lions") Kiwanis' do indeed sneak up on you doing stealthy deeds.
ReplyDeleteNever mind.
You can say they keep the old code-colors of Harpoon alive...
ReplyDeleteAnd ad is well targeted: You have your own tropical paradise being threatened by rampaging Yankees? Buy some cheap dispersable deterrent that is impossible to kill unless enemy kills all the containers in your country.
In fact I am tempted to think my own country could buy a few to deter Russians themselves...
BTW, how many of those can be launched from single large container ship in a saturation attack vs, say US CVNBG?
Notice that the setup looks much like classic preventive war against army that is at its weakest when concentrating prior to invasion - 1967 "6 day war style", or as many historians argue, as Hitler did to Stalin in 1941.
ReplyDeleteBTW, imagine what a few dozens of those containers would do to Chinese trying to cross Taiwan straits? And Chinese may just pissed off Russians enough by pirating their miltech for Russians to sell something to Taiwan...
She looked to me more like
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001713/
Isabella Scorupco.
Managed to luck into a trip into Dubrovnik in 79. Streets were immaculatley clean, you couldn't hold up a camera and not get a post card quality shot, and 9 out of 10 women were head turners....
ReplyDeleteBut then again, it could have just been a Commie plot of disinformation....
When I first saw the Club-K vid a few months ago, my first reaction was to LMAO at the unsubtleness of the marketing department that made it.
ReplyDeleteI mean, come on, Red vs Blue?
Red has sun drenched white sandy beaches with 'Born Free' playing in the background?
And Blue is covered in U.S. Military hardware with menacing music?
Then Red deploys Club'K and fires them to 'Pirates of the Caribbean' music?
Marketing GENIUS!!!
Still, referring to them as 'toys' in the explanation vid?
Bets on how long till Iran buys some? Or till Disney sues for use of their music?
I had a Ukrainian emigre as a Sociology Professor back in the late 1980s and he would often say after a joke went over like a lead ballon, "Ees much funnier in Ukrainian."
ReplyDeleteGIMP, I don't know what history book you were reading, but pretty much all of the major battles during the War of Independence were fought by American regulars, using standard European drill.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the "mass" approach worked pretty well during the Civil War, Spanish-American War, WW1, WW2, and Korea. Vietnam was only occasionally a conventional war.
Not to be the materialistic (and cynical) weasel here, but what do we know about this system's actual capabilities & performance?
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt LCS and DDX looked great on paper, too... ;)
Casey, Back in '80 when I took the "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" course at PG school, the words "rail-based systems" and "over-pressure" were often used together.
ReplyDeleteI would guess, not much. Too many flys, not enough swatters.
ReplyDeleteThere were over a 1000 clones of her walking around the streets of Bucharest this summer. Sweet! ;) . I never got to hear the words-was too busy looking at the orange shirt!
ReplyDelete<span>There were over a 1000 clones of her walking around the streets of Bucharest this summer. Sweet! ;) . I never got to hear the words-was too busy looking at the orange shirt!</span>
ReplyDeleteSo happens I had the (mis)fortune of riding on a bus from Montivideo to Colonia last year with Tricky, who played Right Arm in that movie because the Rio Plata was too rough for the ferry to make it out into the open roadstead off Montivideo. Heck, it was pretty sporty up the river in Colonia, as this high windage ferry had a devil of a time making up to the pier shows.
ReplyDeleteHe was hungover and whiny the whole way.
Now, if she had been on that bus...That would have been OhhhKayy
8-)
How about the faux amphibious assault of Kuwait against Iraqi forces circa Persian Gulf I? Saddam thought the Marines were going to come ashore, meanwhile Schwarzkopf was making a run from Saudi Arabia.
ReplyDeleteSkippy,
ReplyDeleteI am suprised. I would have figured you have gone snobbish about young women and thier place of birth. Since all I see are very pretty Japanese and Asian women all over your site. I never would have thought you enjoyed the scenery in Eastern Europe.
"<span>a Commie plot of disinformation...."</span>
ReplyDeleteA Potemkin Bikini Team?
Them Commies was more crafty than we thought!
Any port in a storm! I still prefer Asian women-but after about two weeks their Eastern European sisters looked pretty OK in their V cut sundresses. (It was a hot summer in Romania). You know the old joke about women in Israel and something in the water don't you? Well the Israelis must have exported it to Romania.
ReplyDeleteIt's the Shell Game writ woldwide with one of the most common denomitators devised. Just the hint of it being somewhere changes the whole dynamic of how you approuch and deal with the people that may have it.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter how good it is, it's the *hidding* in plain sight capability that's going to make everyone freak. ;)
.... and they are pretty low-maintenance and tough as they are easy on the eyes. The Slovaks and Czechs are at the top of the list though....their female military uniforms are top notch after the French Air Force's. As you saw walking about - the average BMI was rather low as well.
ReplyDeleteAm I a bad person for saying that - or can I blame it on Skippy's influence?
Guerilla tactics have been effective when used. Deception works. Mass and firepower work if you want to use a lot of men and material. Spies, assassins, guerillas, infiltrators, poison, disease, and all manner of other methods work too, and at much less cost in blood and treasure. War is not sport; it is of vital importance to the state and must be won. These Club K systems seem very well suited to building a reasonable defense inexpensively and deceptively enough to allow a poor nation the ability to make a stronger one pay dearly for aggression.
ReplyDeleteLow maintenance eh? The Romanians I worked with would take issue with that statement. They thought the Romanian girls were being corrupted.
ReplyDeleteThe Americans living over there that I worked with, however-thought it was paradise! Never underestimate the value of a weak currency and a large COLA.
Am i the only one that finds the fact that a foregin arms dealer is selling cheaper popup missile systems that look like shipping containers to fight Obviously against US forces?
ReplyDeleteSeriously wtf.
Next video needs to be a slow strip over the whole thing...
Ill be in my bunk.. O:-)
Oh I am not knocking it. Having done my fair share of deployments both in the winter and summer in the 6th Fleet AOR. I have seen Czechs, Romanians, Ukrainians, Russians, and all sorts of other eastern European women. Some of whom were able to be successful be the sweater girls of old or could make a Vicky Secret run for her wings. I have also stopped over in HK, Tokyo, Hiro, Phuket, and Malyasia; some of those women looked good too. Just wanted to make sure that Skippy wasn't selling out his ideals for a low cut orange shirt :-P
ReplyDeleteIt is no different then how Boeing likes to use MiG-29's or Su-27's silhouettes for thier F-15/18 pamphlets or Raytheon using old Soviet large anti-shipping missiles to help them sell systems like Standard/RAM/CIWS/SLQ-32, etc.
ReplyDeleteToo bad for ihre. Mongolia. If the low rise jean wasn't invented in country, then it was invented for Mongolian women.
ReplyDeleteI would say target-rich environment :P
ReplyDeleteImagine the packed airbases near the straits, and troops-packed LST and commercial ferries steaming across...
I dont know everyone uses migs. But C-17's, C-5's, Same class of LPD F-18, M1A2, all the others?
ReplyDeleteSigh......
C-dore, I must confess confusion in this case. From general reading I understand "over-pressure" as usually relating to a shockwave deriving from a nuclear explosion, but I fail to grasp the connection to which you allude. From your tone, I suspect an ironic reference.
ReplyDeleteI'll add here that the promotional video evidently referred to some sort of orbital targeting and/or guidance, which tends to rather dramatically narrow down the range of potential users.
I returned to college for a few years back in 2000-2003, and there encountered several Russian lasses; all of them lovely. One in particular comes to mind. She -I'll leave names out of it- was an extraordinarily charming creature from Siberia. Things would have gone swimmingly had she not regularly reminded me I was nearly the same age as her father... :-[
ReplyDeleteI returned to college for a few years back in 2000-2003, and there encountered several Russian lasses; all of them lovely. One in particular comes to mind. She -I'll leave names out of it- was an extraordinarily charming creature from Siberia. Things would have gone swimmingly had she not regularly reminded me I was nearly the same age as her father... :-[
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, a lot of them will end up looking like the ones below.
ReplyDeleteI prefer Asian women because they age better. My Chinese fiancee is 40 and she is hot.
Casey, My reference was ironic. Back in the Cold War, Soviet rail-based systems were considered ineffective because they could be located fairly easily and weren't hardened, and thus could be easily neutralized by low-yield nuclear systems.
ReplyDeleteAs for the orbital targeting/data systems, I'd be guessing that part of the sales pitch is that such information could be made available for an additional charge.